PARSHIP - Dating Site Review

I had resisted using the Internet to find a partner for years, but last November took the plunge and worked my way through a few sites, they only achieved indifferent results. Then I found PARSHIP. I went into the home page and intrigued, completed the multiple choice questions and discovered that I had found a site I liked using. It was quirky. I enjoyed sending smiles and ice-breakers. I spent the first week working through all the recommendations and making contact with the people I liked the sound of. Then I took the plunge and made dates.

On the third date I hit gold, it was an instant attraction. I had finally met someone of integrity, honesty, warmth, wit, was fun to be with, sexy, uncomplicated.

We have been dating for two months and it just keeps getting better. We are 74% compatible and that is about the perfect number. PARSHIP has worked magic, to find somebody in only 4 dates and in only 2 weeks of being a member that is pretty amazing.

I joined Parship having seen an advertisement on the TV. I had a few contacts but none really struck a chord. I saw Mark's profile and thought we matched quite well but having exchanged a couple of emails I discovered that he lives in the Swindon area. I had never bothered on any of the other sites, to pursue anyone more than 100 miles away because it is impractical, but I so enjoyed getting messages from him and writing to him.......we talked about anything and everything and found a real connection. We decided to meet and had a truly magical romantic first date in London. That was 8 months ago last Sunday and we're now talking about setting up home together next year. Parship worked for us.

A friend of mine told me she'd seen some comments about Parship on this site. She said other people didn't seem to rate it as highly as I did, so I thought I'd let them know that it worked for me.

I joined Parship after my wife had walked out on me and our two kids. I’d always thought our marriage was pretty good, but suddenly my life basically felt like one big mess. I was having to carry on running my building business and also do the housework, the cooking and do my best to be both mum and dad to the kids. This went on for a year before some friends who’d seen Parship advertised on TV told me I should give it a go.

After I’d done my profile I immediately got messages from two women. It was pretty exciting to talk to them on the phone. One of them was Kate. She also lived in Manchester, so we arranged to meet in a bar in town the next day. I was impressed when Kate walked in. She had a lot of style, and she turned up to be a very good listener. It was the first time in ages that I felt I was talking to someone who understood me. To tell the truth I poured out my heart to her a bit, but she took it all on board and even gave me some good advice. By the end of the date I knew I wanted to see her again. We enjoy each other’s company and her kids and my kids seem to have hit it off. Kate’s a very supportive person and I feel that I’ve got my life under control again.

My friend met her partner on Parship - she was happy with the site. She searched for a long time before going online but met her right man at last, so I'm so happy for her.

I must admit I found it a useful and interesting site. The personality profile was interesting and seemed to work. It's true that you don't get a huge number of people if you avoid areas like London and it is quite expensive.

I would say some sites make it easy for you to choose a partner on height or build, but I do feel that the dates here do match me better. It depends on whether you see your ideal partner as being a busty blonde over 5ft 9in or someone who has a similar outlook on many aspects of life and personality.

I haven't had issues with speed of site, the blurry photos is a good idea because it makes it less of a meat market.

I have met a very nice date through this site and I hope it develops.

Initially I quite liked Parship, but was very quickly overloaded by contacts from completely the other end of the country and so would be unable to meet up with them, despite my settings stating I wanted relatively local contacts. Finding a work around to stop this was a pain.

When I did meet up with my contacts, they were all very good, however there were several others that I did not meet as they appeared way off the mark.

Despite not having many technical problems myself, most of those I was in contact with did have problems and found customer services to be very poor at getting things sorted.

However, overall, despite a few minor irritations, eg, site sometimes running slow and a couple of occasions when I was unable to gain access, I personally had a relatively good experience. And then my renewal came up...

I had a similar experience to Debbie above. I was not told how much it would cost and that the renewal would be significantly more than the original cost until I received an invoice email stating the transaction had already had gone through. They have an automatic renewal policy for subscriptions but they don't e-mail to say that it is about to expire. The cancellation policy (when you find it) is confusing and you have to cancel the day before your last day of membership rather than the last day as you might intuitively expect.

Before the auto renewal I had been thinking I would probably extend to a 3 month membership but wanted to delay my renewal till after I came back from a holiday during which time I could not use the service. I emailed them on the last day of my membership to see if this could be done, however each of the responses back from their customer services department were quite frankly insulting as they simply copied and pasted multiple irrelevant terms sections from the site rather than dealing with my actual enquiry. I was not originally looking to cancel with them but my experience with their customer service department has meant that I now have, and in the process have had to accept the loss of a month’s paid membership which I could not use.

It was very apparent that they are quick and efficient when it comes to getting your money, but they do not care at all about their customers. It is a shame - if they sorted out their various technical problems and gave a monkey’s about their customers, then they could make this into quite a good site, but I have left them now and will not be going back.

Parship looks like a good idea but it didn't work for me. Despite the "personality match" questionnaire, I found little in common with the people they suggested. I also got really fed up with the constant email nagging from Parship if I hadn't been really active on the site, along the lines of "you haven't contacted such and such a person, they're a really good match, why not take a chance?" Really patronising and irritating.

I also didn't like the fact that others can see if you've visited their profile (and vice versa).

Having said all that, I thought the pricing structure was reasonable IF you had some luck on the site: the friend who put me onto them is marrying someone lovely she met on Parship, so it's not all doom and gloom. I just think it's more down to the luck of the draw than their pseudo-scientific approach would indicate.

Parship is a difficult site to navigate, and does not let you automatically see your intended 'date', which strikes me as monumentally counter-intuitive. Also, you cannot find people near you - just people in a geographical 'region', which may be hundreds of miles across (e.g.: the South-West, or Scotland..!). Their billing system means that you may end up paying far more than you intended, and their 'customer support' is a joke. Parship is a site to be avoided.

I joined up with Parship three months ago, and thought I would get a 25% discount which didn't happen. Didn't get told amount of money I would be parting with until received invoice and transaction already had gone through. Parship has an automatic renewal policy for subscriptions but they don't e-mail you or contact you to say that this is due to expire. Their cancellation policy (when you find it) is very confusing and you have to submit about three different pieces of information regarding your account so that they can identify who you are. I am currently disputing the amount they have invoiced me. Be warned.

This is one of the most useless dating websites ever. For 100% certain at least the last three people who contacted me were totally fraudulent. I traced their IP addresses to Ghana. In fact two of them had the same IP address. One of them even used a mobile with a Ghanaian number. He claimed to be a jewellery designer from Manchester who grew up in Belgium or Italy depending on which one it was. I have e-mailed them several times to report this and got no reply. Next time I’ll try German to see of that gets a better response. Do not join this agency.

I joined Parship for 1 month and was approached by several people who were clearly scamming (1 asked me to phone a high-price 07031 mobile) and was also sent 2 different profiles with the same photo on! Now Parship seems to be refusing to cancel my membership and have just taken money from my credit card again. Beware!

Parship is potentially a really good system. I like the way that the photos are not visible until you release them. And of course you can see whether you're going to be compatible with each potential partner, and where potential friction may arise. Great idea.

The main problem is that the website is really slow. Pages take up to two minutes to load! As each potential partner has four pages to look through, this is just mind blowingly slow and it's impossible to enjoy the process.

I hope they improve this, as I'd like to give it a proper chance to find me my Mr Right!

I agree with Pauline, Parship.co.uk is one of the worst sites around (along with eHarmony apparently). I'm currently a member with Parship, signed up for 3-months because it looked and sounded good. Bravo on their marketing team, who use media, i.e. trusted newspapers, TV advertising etc to market their company. It’s been about 2 weeks now and so far haven't had any new recommended matches than the ones displayed for me when I first joined. And the blurry pictures stay blurry until the other user decides to release it for your viewing, really doesn't help, as you can't see who you're talking to. I'm basically wasting my £57 for a 3-month membership. What’s worse is that I checked my bank statement and I’ve been charged twice for the subscription. I had started to use my credit card to pay but then realised they had this thing called "One click" I think it’s called, which is a faster way to pay really, after keying in my info, it took me back to the same page as the credit card. Thinking I had to go onto that page to get to the completed payment stage, I clicked to register. I thought it odd that I got 2 emails one from one click and another from Parship... then I checked my bank account and yup, I've been charged twice.

They're only form of contact is via e-mail form and I have yet to hear from them regarding my partial refund for not giving me the service that's suppose to be there, and refunding the extra charge they took out.
Beware of this site!

My tip would be to do a bit of research and digging before joining any dating site, and be sure to take note of what other members of the site have said and not the marketing people giving glowing reviews.

I would not recommend Parship. I initially found the site difficult to navigate, so wrote asking for help three times, there was no response, this was within the eight day cooling-off period. As I was unable to contact any members on the site, I decided to apply for a refund. There's no easy explanation on how to get a refund if you wish to cancel your subscription before eight days, even though I wrote asking them how to do this, again no reply, so I forfeited my £20 subscription for no service whatsoever. A waste of money. The only transaction that was speedy was them taking my money out.